After the siege and capture of Khartum the people who had held out against the Mahdists were put to the most unspeakable tortures, all of them, that is, except the young women and girls. These were reserved for the Mahdi’s harem. For weeks after the battle there went on in his camp at Omdurman the business of choosing from the fairest for his own establishment, while the ones he rejected were turned over to his chief favourites and advisers. After Mohammed Ahmed’s death, which occurred close on the heels of his victory, the Khalifa had the Mahdi’s widows and all the women of his harem imprisoned in a high-walled compound guarded by eunuchs. None was allowed to marry or go out into the world again. The Omdurman of the present, which is laid on practically the same lines as that of the past, covers almost the same ground, although it has much fewer people. During my trip of to-day I climbed to the top of the old palace of the Khalifa, and took a look over the city. The houses stretch along the Nile for seven or eight miles, and the water front is fringed with a thicket of boats. Some of the town is on the main stream, and reaches out from the river in all directions. It is a city of mud in every sense of the word. Of its many thousand houses there are not a score which are of more than one story, and you can count on your fingers the houses made of burnt brick. When I first rode through it I asked my guide if the holes in the walls had been made by cannon-balls at the time of the fighting. “Why, man,” he replied, “those are the windows.” Most of the houses are flat roofed, with drain pipes extending out over the street so that when it rains the water pours down on the necks of the passers-by. The one-story mud houses have mud walls about them, and the mud stores face streets paved only with mud. The walls of the vast inclosure of the Khalifa are made of mud bricks, while the houses inside, which now form the quarters of the Anglo-Egyptian soldiers and officers, are of sun-baked dirt. The Khalifa was so afraid of being assassinated that he had all the houses near his palace torn down, shut himself up in his walled inclosure, and kept at his side a great bodyguard, to which he was forever adding more soldiers. His special apartments in the palace were considered the last word in luxury. They had beautiful curtains and carpets of silk and actually boasted big brass beds with mosquito nets, spoils from the European houses at Khartum. Standing on the Khalifa’s palace, one can follow many of the streets with one’s eye. Some of them are of great width, but the majority are narrow and winding. The whole city, in fact, is a labyrinth cut up by new avenues laid out by the British, with the holy buildings and the Khalifa’s old government structures in the middle. But the British are improving conditions in Omdurman, and have elaborate plans for its development, including a fine park in the centre of the city.